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When the portals spiral to life out of nothing on the battlefield, Thor realizes he has utterly forgotten what hope feels like. The lurching sensation in his chest, the sudden heart-deep knowledge that just maybe things will come out right in the end, the first glimpse of light when the dark seemed to stretch forever—
Actually, all of it is new, because if he’s learned one thing over the past few years (and then drowned himself in alcohol to forget it), it’s that he never knew true despair until he watched his little brother die, failed to avenge him, and lost half the tiny remnant of Asgard in the process. The other times he’s known loss...at least then something else was left, some comfort or purpose, not the howling nothingness that dogs his every step in New Asgard. But he’d forgotten, too, that there could be reason to hope.
He feels it now, his chest expanding with the first full breath since his ribs cracked under Thanos’s fists, and still more portals open to reveal armies of the lost, alive as if they’d never crumbled to dust—
And there is a tiny, foolish part of him that hopes just for an instant that at least one of his dead will come back to him somehow, that this miracle is for him too, even as he knows there are no more miracles for the dying house of Odin. It shouldn’t hurt, knowing it again, and it does anyway, in that tiny foolish part of himself that cherished its own hopes for less than a second. It hurts, like a weight on his chest, like Stormbreaker carving him open, and he crushes the rest of it before it can cripple him.
He is glad for everyone who has now regained those they love. He is. He…will be. As always, the only thing left for Thor is the battle, and it’s enough because it has to be. He is not going to hurt himself further by searching the crowds for a dead man.
So he almost misses it at first when a small new portal spins into existence just a few paces to his left, a portal with green light sparking at its edges, backed by the vastness of space and the rough surface of some barren moon or asteroid. A single figure steps through it—staggers, really, there’s almost no grace to his movements at all, and his face is too shadowed to make out, but—
Thor wants to make himself look away, knowing it can’t be real. The longer he looks, the more he will allow himself again to hope, and this time it will destroy him when reality asserts itself.
The portal winks out. Loki raises his head, ice crystals glittering in his hair and across his battered leathers, the deep blue of his Jotun heritage fading to a nearly gray pallor. He is cradling his left wrist, there is dried blood on his face, his neck is so dark with bruising the skin is almost black, and he is breathing and alive.
He should go, Thor thinks distantly. Throw himself at Thanos and die fighting so he can wake in Valhalla and embrace his true brother there and never have to deal with the fact that this apparition cannot be real. It won’t matter anyway if he dies, not really, not anymore, and if Loki’s here to guide him home, that’s…well, that’s really not so bad after all.
Loki takes an unsteady step toward him, then another, his eyes fixed on Thor. “I know, I know,” he says, his voice so rough Thor reflexively winces to hear it, “I’m late again. You don’t have to tell me.” He pauses. “You…got a new eye.”
Thor swallows hard and decides, abruptly, to Hel with it. This isn’t real but he can pretend. “Gift from a friend,” he says, and then, voice cracking, “You are late.”
“In my defense,” Loki says, “I came as soon as I could. I was a bit busy being dead. You know how it is.”
“I really don’t,” Thor says. He is aching to grab his brother and never let go, but then the illusion will break, and he just wants to pretend as long as he can. “You look terrible.”
Loki actually grins at that—an exhausted and bloody smile but still a defiant one, still full of life, and it hurts Thor to look at. “I’d say it takes one to know one, but all things considered I think we’re both doing pretty well.” He glances around the battlefield, expression tightening. “I suspect you have rather more to contribute than I do, at this point, but let it never be said that I didn’t try.”
That sounds horribly like a farewell and Thor almost starts begging, no, I’m not ready, I can’t do this if you go, just stay a little bit longer so I can die well, but instead Loki flicks his good hand out to summon a knife. It’s slower to appear than normal, popping into existence with a flare of sickly green light, and he stumbles, swaying forward. Thor lurches forward to catch him, acting on sheer instinct, his mind a crucial half-second too slow to stop him from breaking the illusion for good—
—and then his hands are gripping Loki’s elbows, his solid and pointy and very real elbows, and Thor’s whole brain seems to short-circuit. Loki’s head drops forward a little with a huff of something like laughter, and he lets Thor take his weight for a moment, breathing hard. “As I said. I don’t suppose you happen to have a healing stone?”
Thor shakes his head, wordless, and feels Loki shrug. He feels it. He feels the muscles shift under his hands, the chill of not-quite-Jotun flesh under charred leather. Loki is close enough now that Thor can smell him, blood and sweat and ice, the hot stink of fuel and scorched metal, alive. Alive.
“No,” Loki says a little breathlessly, “I imagine you haven’t been able to make very many without me there to supervise, hm? No matter. I’ll manage.”
“We didn’t expect a battle today,” Thor says hoarsely. “Brother…” Words fail him again. He can’t think of anything to ask that will tell him this is real, not just his shattered mind scrambling for a little comfort before the end.
Loki raises his head, his eyes meeting Thor’s—red-streaked, an awful mix of natural Jotun coloring and the bloody results of burst blood vessels, but present and living, nothing of the dead blank emptiness that haunts Thor’s nightmares. “I’m here,” he says, and it’s exactly what Thor wants to hear, which is why he can’t bring himself to trust it. He still can't think of anything to say.
“Right,” Loki says after a moment, rolling his shoulders back with a wince he almost manages to hide and starting to pull away. “Shall we?”
Thor tightens his grip convulsively on a surge of fresh terror, knowing Loki will disappear again the moment he lets go, and then abruptly realizes Dr. Strange is looking in his direction.
More specifically, he is looking at Loki.
Loki glances aside, following Thor’s gaze, and his expression sours at the speed of light. He smooths it out a little when Dr. Strange nods to him, and Loki dips his chin in return, but he still looks so disgruntled that Thor has to bite his tongue to prevent a burst of (probably hysterical) laughter. It’s the grimace that does it, the inimitably Loki way his whole face screws up in displeasure, bringing to mind nothing more than a cat who’s just been forced through an unwanted bath, and it’s all real. It has to be real.
Thor lets go then, hefting Stormbreaker. Loki does not disappear. His hand curls more securely around his knife and he steps into position next to his brother, natural as breathing. As they face Thanos side by side, Thor feels something inside him begin to mend, something he thought irreparably broken. Whatever happens next, for this one moment the universe has been set right again.